


Isabella

by Scarlet



Category: Harlots (TV)
Genre: Canon Backstory, F/F, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 09:41:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15726846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scarlet/pseuds/Scarlet
Summary: “Your brother left last night for France. He will be gone a while.”





	Isabella

**Author's Note:**

> This is my attempt at giving Lady Fitz a canon compliant backstory. I always wondered how her father handled what had happened to her. She obviously had a support system in place that enabled her to give birth to her child and send it away to be raised elsewhere. How would her family have reacted to all this? How did she deal with her brother once he came back?

 

“Your brother left last night for France. He will be gone a while.”

Her father didn’t look at her when he said this, his eyes stayed on the page he was reading, his fingers briefly tightening against the spine of his book the only indication that all was not well.

Isabella didn’t say anything. What could she possibly say? What had happened to her was not something she could discuss with anyone, let alone her father. Maybe, had her mother been alive… but consumption had taken her when Isabella was still an infant.

Her father knew though. She was sure of it. Harcourt had left the family home too abruptly for him not having been summoned to do so.

But how did papa find out? Isabella hadn’t said anything to anyone. Of course she hadn’t. How would she even voice what her brother had done to her? She could still see his ghastly triumphant smile whenever she closed her eyes, still feel the weight of his body on her. It had been suffocating her ever since. She doubted she’d ever be able to breathe properly ever again, even when her stays were unlaced.

Did she scream that night and alert the servants? She couldn’t remember. She probably did. She remembered she had fought. She had fought like a wild beast, trying to push him off, but he was so much stronger than she had been.

The mystery remained intact until the day she started showing. She didn’t know what was happening to her back then, but her maid did, and one evening, Mrs Reynolds, the housekeeper knocked on her bedroom door, requesting a word. Isabella loved Mrs. Reynolds. The grey-haired woman had a kind face and calm eyes. She always kept treats in her pockets for Isabella when she was little. Isabella used to follow her around everywhere, even helping her out with the chores, until it was deemed inappropriate for a young lady to spend so much time with the help.

Mrs Reynolds was the closest thing to a mother Isabella ever had.

“My Lady, I need to address a delicate matter with you. And I’m sorry to say there are no easy ways to say it.”

Isabella’s breath caught in her throat and all she could do was nod.

Mrs Reynolds brushed the front of her black dress, took a deep breath in. “Lady Isabella, I’m afraid you might be with child.”

“No.” Isabella raised a horrified hand to her lips, “NO NO NO NO NO, NO!” she shouted, bolting from her chair by the dressing table and throwing herself on the bed, biting her pillow to smother the screams coming unbidden from her throat. She didn’t care about propriety, didn’t care that someone was here to witness her distress. Her world was falling apart, her future, her reputation, her respectability, her name, everything that mattered. She wanted to yell at Mrs Reynolds that she was wrong, that she couldn’t be. She was only fourteen years of age. Had only started bleeding last year. But the bleeding had stopped after that fateful night, and the tenderness in her breasts, the growing swell of her belly suddenly made terrible, implacable sense.

She felt Mrs Reynold’s rough warm hand stroke her back. “My Lady... I’m so, so very sorry...” Isabella heard the words “wretched” and “terrible” but very little else made sense as she expelled the rage that had poisoned her soul like a festering carrion in great heaving sobs. 

When Isabella eventually calmed down, Mrs Reynolds invited her to sit up on the bed, wiped her tears with one of her ubiquitous pristine white handkerchief, gave her a sip of tea, and took her hands. “Your father’s asked me to talk to you, so we could make the necessary arrangements.”

“How did he find out?” Isabella asked, angrily wiping more tears from her cheeks. “HOW COULD YOU ALL KNOW AND NO TALK TO ME ?” Isabella knew the woman in front of her didn’t deserve her ire, but she was simply too upset.

Mrs Reynolds looked at her with such unadulterated pity, it made Isabella want to scream again and break every china in her room. “You were heard my Lady, and your bed sheets that morning...” Mrs Reynolds’ voice trailed off.

The blood. Of course.

“Who heard?” Isabella asked between clenched teeth. She wanted to know, she wanted to know so badly it ate at her gut like vinegar, she wanted to know who had heard her cries for help that night and not done a single thing about it.

Mrs Reynolds shook her head sadly. “I’m afraid I am not at liberty to say, my Lady.”

“Was it Marie? One of the footmen?”

Mrs Reynolds just stared at her sadly and Isabella knew the woman well enough to know she wouldn’t get anything more out of her. As Isabella expected, the housekeeper ignored her question and changed the subject. “Your father can’t bring himself to send you away to a convent for your confinement. And I agree with him that the less people see you the better. You will stay in your room. Someone will be found to care for the child once it is born. Nobody has to know what happened to you, my Lady. You can forget it ever happened once this... unpleasantness is dealt with.”

"An unpleasantness is when I lose an earring, not when my own brother forces himself upon me," Isabella snapped. 

Mrs Reynolds blanched at her bluntness."I meant not offence my Lady, I meant to say that not all is lost. You're young, you can put this tragic event behind you and have a normal life."

Isabella laughed bitterly at the idea her life could ever be normal again. “Until my monstrous brother returns home.”

“He will never lay a hand on you ever again, Lady Isabella, that I can promise,” Mrs Reynolds said in a steely voice, “your father will not allow it.”

Isabella marvelled at the fact that their housekeeper had such an intimate knowledge of what her father would or would not allow.

“It seems my father is discussing this with everyone but his own daughter,” Isabella spat.

Mrs Reynolds squeezed her hand. “You have to forgive him Lady Isabella, men do not know how to handle these matters. This isn’t something a father should ever have to discuss with his daughter. But know he loves you very much. And he is terribly distressed about this ghastly situation.”

It dawned on Isabella that beneath all her anger and disgust, she felt slightly better. This wasn’t her secret to bear alone anymore. She now had a modicum of support and understanding from her family. Which led to her next question.

“Besides my father and yourself, how many people know about this?”

“Marie knows you’re expecting, but not anything else and you know you can trust her not to utter a word.” Isabella didn’t dispute this. Marie was not only her maid but also the cooks’ daughter. She was born two years after Isabella. They’d grown up together in Blayne house, albeit on different floors.

“Your secret is safe, we will take it to our grave,” Mrs Reynolds promised solemnly.

“What about the person who heard me, whose name you will not disclose. How can you be sure they won’t talk?”

“Because they would never find work anywhere else if they did. Lord Fitzwilliam would see to that.” Mrs Reynolds said firmly. “Besides, they had a lot more to lose by speaking up than by staying quiet. It took a lot of courage for them to come to me. They will not betray your secret.”

Isabella never found out who the person was. Sometimes she thought it might be Helen, the housemaid, sometimes Baptiste their French footman. But their faces remained unreadable, forever blank velum of smooth, servile obedience.

She officially suffered from a lengthy bout of pneumonia. Her father brought her books to read, but never stayed. He wouldn’t even look her in the eye. Isabella, who had always been close to her father, greatly suffered from his incapacity to see past the veil of shame that obscured her from his view.

She gave birth a cold day in January. Isabella named the child Sophia. It wasn’t a family name, as it wouldn’t have been proper to name the sinful fruit of her loins after her mother or one of her ancestors.

The woman, a Mrs Lydia Quigley, who came to her bedchamber a few days later, wasn’t a lady. Her gown was too garish, her wig too cheap, her jewellery too conspicuous, her perfume too cloying, like a cesspit of decaying roses.

“Aren’t you a perfect little peach?” the woman cooed, when the maid put Sophia in her arms.

Isabella turned her head against her pillow, tears running down her cheeks, as Mrs Reynolds silently led Mrs Quigley out of her room.

Life resumed in Blayne house as if nothing had happened. Isabella sunk for a while in melancholy, confused by how much she was missing Sophia, when she should have felt unburdened that the evidence of her damnation had been taken away. Her father tried to start talking to her again over breakfast, but Isabella was far too angry at him to engage in conversation. After a couple of tries, her dear papa, the man who'd avoided her for the better part of a year, gave up his endeavours, and returned to the safety of his beloved books.

As soon as she was well enough, Isabella asked the servants to move all her belongings to her mother’s bedroom. She didn’t ask her father if he minded or not. She could no longer stand the sight of her own room, her own bed. It was a cursed place she would never enter ever again.

Isabella started accepting invitations from her aunts and mother's old friends again. She was welcomed warmly back by the beau monde, and heard every variation on how delighted they were to see her recovered from her dreadful illness. If they suspected something was afoul, they never let it show. It would have been unbecoming to suggest anything was amiss with the young heiress.  

Harcourt stayed in France for several years, and hadn't her father's health begun to decline, Isabella suspected he would have been made to stay there even longer. But an heir was needed to manage the estate, so her brother was eventually allowed to come back. Next to their glowering father, Isabella greeted him politely from the stone steps of their house, her face schooled into a superb composed mask of detachment. She thanked him for the silk dresses and jewellery he’d brought back for her from Paris. Then Isabella told her maids to sell everything and give the money to the parish for the needy. Harcourt was furious when he found out, which pleased her greatly.

A footman stood by her bedroom door day and night, though she doubted Harcourt would have tried anything while their father was still alive. Lord Fitzwillliam’s relationship with his son had cooled considerably and it stayed that way until his death.

When their father's health took a turn for the worse, Isabella realised that there would soon be no-one to protect her against a brother whose lecherous smile and lustful gaze made her flesh crawl. She couldn't bring herself to give a favourable reply to her many suitors. The mere thought of being with a man, any man, had become perfectly abhorrent to her.

She started going horse riding every day in order to gain strength. And when one day, Harcourt made the mistake of running his hand along her neck, she broke his finger.

It didn't entirely stop him though. Harcourt took a perverse delight from touching her whenever he knew he could get away with it, when other people were present. A hand on the shoulder here, a caress on her cheek there, all gestures that could pass for innocent brotherly displays of affection. It took all the self-control her breeding had equipped her with not to flinch and keep smiling at her hosts.

Isabella had hoped that when their father died, she could take her inheritance and leave her wretched brother behind forever, maybe even move to another country. Isabella knew little about money, never having needed to worry about where it came from. After their father’s passing, she was most distressed to find out that, as an unmarried woman, the money her father had left her, wasn’t really hers at all. Harcourt held her purses’ strings like a noose around her neck. 

Isabella spent more and more time at the gambling tables and Harcourt indulged her. She had hoped that he would grow weary of her costly spending habits, but he loved playing the magnanimous brother who settled all her debts and chastised her like a child. 

Isabella couldn't see a way out. All the doors to her freedom had closed one by one. Her only comfort was that Sophia was safe. Isabella gradually accepted that she had to make the best of a bad situation. She kept gambling and entertaining guests, waiting for a moment an opportunity that seemed increasingly remote as the years went by.

Until one day a beautiful, mesmerizing young harlot named Charlotte Wells walked into her life and offered her friendship. As Isabella picked up one of the delicate roses she'd personally picked from her garden earlier that day, and placed it on her footman's silver tray, something thrilling and unfamiliar blossomed in her heart. 

Something that felt very much like hope. 

**Author's Note:**

> Like my previous story, I'm beta-less for this fandom so let me know if you spot anything wonky.


End file.
